COFFEE, for you.

By: Mark Jayson T. Abranilla

Ah, Coffee. To a lot of people, it is so hard to imagine a day without getting their dose of
caffeine. Whether you just woke up and cradling your mug of coffee while preparing for
work, or grabbed a cup from Starbucks to fuel up after a tiring day at school, there’s just
incredibly calming about a hot or iced cup of this favorite beverage. Saying ‘’let’s drink a
coffee’’ can also mean so much more than it is. It can also mean ‘’I miss you’’, ’’, an
invitation to have a heart-to-heart talk and so many others. Drinking coffee has been a
tradition when you want to have a bond with someone that is dear to you.

Good news: Studies indicate that coffee can help guard against conditions such as
Alzheimer’s disease and heart disease. It also contains antioxidants and other active
substances that may prevent internal inflammation.

Coffee helps protect people from type 2 diabetes as a study conducted by Harvard
researchers and published in Diabetologia conveys. Also, a number of research, suggest
that consuming coffee also reduces the risk of Parkinson’s disease.

Coffee also helps us improve our mental health as according to coffeandhealth.org,

these are specific studies that investigated caffeine in relation to the risk of depression:

‘’ A study of 50,739 women (average age 63 years), part of the Nurses’ Health
Study, suggested that women who consumed 2-3 or at least 4 cups of caffeinated
coffee per day were, respectively, 15% or 20% less likely to develop depression,
compared to those who drank at most one cup of caffeinated coffee per week. The
consumption of decaffeinated coffee had no impact on depression risk. This
observational study suggests the possibility of a protective effect of caffeine on
depression risk.

 A cohort study of Finnish men reported a 77% risk reduction for depression in
heavy coffee drinkers (those who consumed over 813mg caffeine daily). This
effect was limited to coffee and was not found with either tea or caffeine alone.’’

But even prior to knowing these studies, we’ve always felt and known that coffee helps
us soothe and relax when we feel stressed. The aroma, the feeling of sipping your iced
caramel macchiato through your green plastic straw; it just really the feeling and the fact
that you’re holding a coffee to drink just sets everything into place and will make you
feel all fired up to start or end a busy day.
The experience that coffee provides is more than just its health benefits, while it is
actually perfect that we enjoy something that has this many benefits for our mind and
body; it is the bond and the simple memories that we share while we sit with people we
care about over a coffee that we will retain in our memories all while its health benefits
prolong our lives.